Refuge

Refuge: shelter held in question

Refuge places a small, wide-eyed figure beneath a great folded form. The arrangement promises shelter but does not settle whether shelter has been found. A black shape approaches from the left; the space around the figure is mottled rather than clear. Paul Klee made the work in 1930, near the end of his years teaching at the Bauhaus. It now belongs to the Norton Simon Museum's Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection in Pasadena. The museum identifies its materials as oil, tempera and watercolour on plaster-grounded gauze mounted on cardboard, measuring 54.6 × 34.9 cm. Its accession number is P.1953.065.^[1]

The German title Zuflucht appears alongside Refuge in a German scholarly publication's image identification. The museum's public object record uses the English title alone; that record does not reproduce an artist's inscription or annual work number. It does, however, cite the printed Paul Klee: Catalogue Raisonné, volume 5 (2001), figure 5137 on page 419. That is a bibliographic pointer supplied by the museum, not a claim that the printed volume has been directly checked here.^[1][4]

Looking at the figure

The head is round and almost mask-like: two little circles for eyes, a thin vertical nose and an open mouth. One long arm reaches left and one leg drops toward the lower right. The body is difficult to isolate. At moments the limbs seem to belong to a single stretched creature; at others they look like spare parts joined by the colour field. Klee lets a few sharply legible marks carry the figure without enclosing it in a stable outline. The museum describes it as a head, arm and leg held almost motionless in a heavy atmosphere. Its expression can be read as fear, but the source of that fear is left open.^[1]

The dark mark to the left has a blunt body and a thin projection pointing toward the figure. It could be seen as a threatening object, a shadow or something else entirely. The museum deliberately frames its description as a question. The painting does not give this form a name, and its ambiguity matters: the eye registers a possible danger before it can identify one. That uncertainty also makes the open mouth hard to explain. It may register terror, a cry or simply Klee's economical way of giving the face presence.^[1]

Above the figure, angled bands converge at a high point and sweep outward. They recall a tent, a mountain, a roof or a canopy. The museum suggests that this form might be a desired refuge or the very thing from which the figure is fleeing. Neither reading has to exclude the other. The broad upper shape dominates the small figure, yet its edges are not a closed architectural boundary. It could protect, press down or both. Klee has staged a relation between figure and shelter without drawing a straightforward story about arrival or escape.^[1]

A shelter made from paint

The surface complicates the drawing. The Norton Simon Museum specifies plaster-grounded gauze on cardboard as the support. This is a deliberately worked ground, not simply watercolour laid on a standard sheet of paper. Oil, tempera and watercolour all contribute to the image, and the museum draws attention to the fine brown watercolour hatching used to define key forms. The bands above the head appear built by repeated strokes; surrounding colour does not sit as a flat, uniform backdrop. The mixed materials help produce a space that feels both airy and resistant, as if the figure must pass through the painting's texture.^[1]

Soft rose, mauve, brown and grey-blue run across the field. Their delicacy does not cancel the scene's unease. The face stands out because its light disc and tiny features are unusually clear inside the diffuse colour. The dark shape on the left is equally forceful because it refuses the surrounding palette. Between them, the viewer moves from one small certainty to another while the larger space stays unresolved. This is a visual effect available to direct looking; it should not be converted into a documented account of Klee's intention.^[1]

The gauze and plaster ground are especially important to the sense of enclosure. The upper bands read partly as drawn structure and partly as marks absorbed into a worked skin. A neat roof would separate interior from exterior. Here, the same reddish atmosphere occupies the area beneath the possible canopy and the space outside it. If the title proposes safety, the surface delays its arrival. The shelter is an idea in the composition as much as a place the figure can enter.

What the title does, and does not, tell us

Zuflucht can mean refuge or a place of shelter. A title directs the viewer toward need, protection and vulnerability, but it cannot by itself identify the depicted event. The existing local article connected the painting to war trauma and suggested that Klee intended to comfort people facing a conflict. The object record gives no such explanation. Nor does a 1930 date permit the work to be treated as a response to the Second World War, which had not begun. Political pressure and economic crisis were real parts of the period, but attaching this specific figure to a specific war, death or psychological history would outrun the evidence.^[1][3][4]

The face might still invite an emotional response. Klee's economy makes it unusually exposed: a few features appear inside a broad field of colour, with no secure horizon or floor. The painting permits a viewer to imagine fear, sanctuary or flight. These are readings of the pictured relation among figure, dark shape and overhead form. They are not biographical facts. The museum's own text keeps both the threatening and protective readings available, a useful model for approaching a work whose narrative remains deliberately unstable.^[1]

Klee in 1930

The work belongs to a transitional year in Klee's professional life. A Zentrum Paul Klee publication records that, in May 1930, he informally agreed with Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer to leave the school on 1 April 1931. His appointment at the Düsseldorf academy was confirmed during the summer, and he submitted his formal resignation in September. The centre also reproduces a September letter to Lily Klee in which he describes seeking relief from committee obligations while retaining his painting class. This dates Refuge to the final Bauhaus period, before the move to Düsseldorf. It does not establish that the depicted need for shelter is an allegory of his career decision.^[3]

The chronology matters because a familiar shorthand can distort the painting. Klee did not make this work after his 1933 dismissal from Düsseldorf and return to Bern. Those later events are central to his biography, but they should not be projected backwards as the work's known cause. The museum's exhibition history places Refuge at the 1930 Venice Biennale German Pavilion and later in a succession of American shows. It was already circulating publicly in the year it was made.^[1][3]

Galka Scheyer and the work's American history

The Norton Simon Museum records that Klee consigned Refuge in 1930 and that Lily Klee later sold it to Galka Scheyer in 1942. Scheyer was the advocate of the “Blue Four”: Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Vassily Kandinsky and Alexei Jawlensky. The museum's collection history explains that she promoted their work in the United States from 1924 through lectures, exhibitions and educational programmes, first in New York and then in California. The painting's journey thus belongs to a sustained network of advocacy for modern art, rather than to an isolated museum purchase.^[1][2]

The museum lists appearances in Los Angeles Blue Four exhibitions in 1933, a 1935 Klee show, a 1937 San Francisco exhibition and a 1941 memorial exhibition, among many later displays. It also lists a 2017 exhibition, Maven of Modernism: Galka Scheyer in California. These are documented venues and dates, not proof of what each audience thought of the image. They do show that the painting remained visible in Scheyer's circle before and after its recorded 1942 sale to her.^[1]

Scheyer died in 1945. According to the museum's collection history, her trustees chose the Pasadena Art Institute as custodian of her collection in 1953, keeping it together in California. The Refuge object record gives the subsequent institutional sequence: Pasadena Art Institute (1953–54), Pasadena Art Museum (1954–75), and Norton Simon Museum from 1975. The work's current credit line is “Norton Simon Museum, The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection.” That credit names the history through which this 1930 painting reached Pasadena.^[1][2]

Seeing Refuge today

The Norton Simon object record gives the work’s title, date, medium, dimensions, collection number, provenance and exhibition history. Its interpretation leaves the upper form unresolved.^[1]

The painting's strength lies in its refusal to settle the basic promise of its name. The broad shape may be protective, while its weight may also intimidate. The figure can be seen, but not securely placed. The left-hand darkness is precise enough to worry the eye and vague enough to resist identification. Refuge makes shelter feel like a question asked inside the image, and the museum's documented history lets us ask that question without supplying an invented answer.

Related artworks

Explore eight other Klee works from the researched artwork cluster.

Ad Marginem

1930

Error on Green

1930

Fire in the Evening

1929

Highway and Byways

1929

Ad Parnassum

1932

Castle and Sun

1928

Cat and Bird

1928

Mask of Fear

1932

References

1. Norton Simon Museum, Refuge (P.1953.065), object record, interpretation, provenance, exhibition and publication histories, and image-use notice; accessed 27 September 2026, View source.
2. Norton Simon Museum, “The Blue Four Galka Scheyer Collection at the Norton Simon Museum”, institutional collection history; accessed 27 September 2026, View source.
3. Zentrum Paul Klee, Paul Klee am Bauhaus, multilingual exhibition publication, 1930 chronology and Klee's September letter to Lily; accessed 27 September 2026, View source.
4. Psychosozial-Verlag, 2022 book preview, cover illustration identification “Paul Klee, Zuflucht (Refuge), 1930”; accessed 27 September 2026, View source.